The Story of a Life (8 page)

The end of winter came, but it did not warm my body. The path from the hut to the village had turned into a sticky mire. I would return home totally covered in mud. For some reason, the young men whom Maria loved did not come. In their place came the elderly peasants, heavy and silent, whom Maria called “the old cart horses.” She would lie with them grudgingly and stand her ground relentlessly in the bargaining that followed. Once she struggled with one of them and really scratched him good and proper.

The days became clearer, but they brought me no peace. I was afraid of Maria. She would down bottle after bottle, curse, and throw things. Even at me. If the sausage or the vodka was not to her liking, she would scratch my face, call me “bastard of bastards,” and hurl curses at me.

What I feared came to pass, but not as I had imagined. The fierce winds that had beaten against the hut for more than a month eventually brought down the roof and the walls. Apparently the old wooden hut was already rotted through, and it collapsed under the onslaught of the winds. Suddenly, in broad daylight, there we stood, Maria and I, in the midst of the gaping hut. The household objects, and the bed upon which so many peasants had kneaded Maria’s flesh, had been tossed out with one violent gust, as if flung upward. A heavy beam lay across the large quilt that Maria used to wrap herself in.

At the sight of this destruction, a stream of manic laughter burst out of her.

“Just look at this,” she shouted. “See what those demons have done to me!”

It seemed to me that she was really and truly happy about the destruction, as if it had come only to save her from her depression. Yet, no more than a few moments later, the laughter froze on her lips, her eyes glazed over, and a chill rage set her jaw. I knew this anger, and I was afraid of it. I waited for Maria to tell me what to do. It pained me that the hut, whose every corner was familiar to me, had been so totally wrecked. I saw the rafters scattered on the ground. For some reason, I started picking up the plates and the pots and pans that had fallen off the shelves, and I put them on the wooden counter that was used for preparing the meals. At first it seemed to me that Maria was happy that I was gathering the utensils, but a few seconds later she began shouting at me. “What are you doing, bastard? Who asked you to do this? Get out of here! Don’t let me see your face,” she screamed, and slapped me. But this time she didn’t stop there, and with a stick in her hand she ran after me and knocked me down. I saw the stick and tried to get up, but I couldn’t. In the end, just as a harnessed horse, whipped and whipped again, eventually drags itself out of the mire, I got to my feet and ran. I didn’t go back to her.

More than fifty years have passed, and that fear is still within my legs. Sometimes it seems to me that the stick that she threw at me is still airborne. But, more than this humiliating parting from her, I remember how her face could suddenly change and radiate happiness. Her happiness, like her sadness, knew no bounds. When she was happy, she seemed to resemble the woman in the picture that hung at the head of her bed: young, crowned with wavy locks, wearing a summer dress that hung from two straps, tall and slender, and with a smile that lit up her face. That was apparently how she wished to see herself, or perhaps that is how she wanted to be remembered.

SOME SIGHTS ARE NOT easily forgotten. I was ten years old and I lived in the forest. Summer in the forest is full of surprises: a cherry tree here, and over there, growing close to the ground, a wild strawberry bush. It had been two weeks since it rained. My shoes and clothes had dried out, and I found the smell of mold seeping out of them rather pleasant. It seemed that if I could only find the right path, it would lead me straight to my parents.

The thought that my parents were waiting for me stayed with me, protecting me throughout the war. Paths did lead me out of the forest, but not to my parents. Every day I tried another path, and every day I was disappointed.

The vistas alongside the forest were open and full of light: field upon field of corn as far as the eye could see, out to the distant horizon. Sometimes I’d stand for hours and wait for my parents. Over time I made up omens in anticipation of their return: if the wind was strong … if I saw a white horse … if the sun set without a flaming sky. These omens brought inevitable disappointment, but for some reason I did
not despair. I’d make up new omens, find new paths. For hours I’d sit by the banks of the stream and envision my parents returning to me.

Sometimes I’d be gripped by a deep sadness, a feeling that I’d die without ever seeing my parents again. I’d pictured my own death in various ways, sometimes as a kind of drifting up into the sky, higher and higher, and sometimes as being carried along upon the tops of the cornfields. It was clear to me that after my death I would no longer be lost. No longer would any omens mislead me, and there would be only one path that would lead me directly to my parents. On the route to the camp and during my time there I had seen many dying people, yet somehow I refused to see my own death as resembling theirs in any way.

On one of the very quiet days in the forest (most of the days were quiet, and apart from the shriek of birds of prey there were no discordant sounds), while I was standing at the edge of a cornfield, fascinated by its wavelike movement and by the green that changed from light to dark and then back again, I suddenly saw a small dark figure moving over the waves of corn. It seemed to me that he was swimming quite effortlessly. The small figure was far from me, and yet I could still see his movements very clearly.

As I was following this dark little figure, I heard muted voices from a distance, the sound of the wind mingling with the blustery voices of men. I looked around and saw nothing. The dark figure had advanced, and it seemed as though he was attempting to reach the forest. Straining to see from which direction the sounds were coming, I could make out a posse of men on the ridge next to me, which was also a cornfield. They were advancing as if on a raft. At first I didn’t make the connection between the small figure that was swimming across the top of the cornfield and these other bodies that were also being borne aloft, but after a while I realized that their movements
were accompanied by war cries, that they were fanning out to the sides and flanking him. The small figure, who at first had seemed to be swimming effortlessly, now appeared to be growing tired. The distance between him and the forest toward which he was aiming had not narrowed.

All this took place a few hundred meters from me, and although I saw the people, I connected these strong movements not with human beings but with nature. It seemed to me that the winds were gathering strength to leap forward and spread over the cornfields and cut them down.

It didn’t take all that long for the truth to be revealed. The small figure was no more than a child, and those pursuing him, peasants. There were many peasants, with axes and scythes in their hands, pressing forward, determined to catch him. Now I saw the child’s figure very clearly; he was breathing heavily and turning his head every few moments. It was clear that he wouldn’t escape them. He couldn’t escape. They were many and they could outrun him; soon they would be blocking his path.

I stood and looked at the swarthy, sturdy faces of the peasants and at the intensity of their advance. The child was trying very hard, but his efforts were in vain. Apparently he was caught not far from the forest; I heard him pleading with them.

After that, I saw the crowd of men return to the village. They were braying, exultant, as if after a successful hunt. Two young peasants dragged the child by his arms. I knew that soon, if he was still alive, they’d turn him over to the police, and in my heart I knew that my fate, when the time came, would be no different from his. Yet that night, when I laid my head down on the earth, I was happy to be alive and see the stars through the trees. This selfish feeling, which I knew to be impure, enfolded me, pulling me down into the depths of sleep.

I CAME ACROSS more than a few courageous and noble people during the war. Most memorable were the brothers Rauchwerger. Tall and sturdy, they looked like the Ruthenian peasants who worked in the warehouses. They had a non-Jewish type of naïveté that was evident in their every gesture. They trusted people and didn’t bargain. Everyone cheated them, but they never got angry, never shouted or raised a hand.

Otto, the firstborn, had worked for many years in a lumberyard. The owner, a small shriveled Jew, exploited Otto’s strength, working him late into the night. Otto neither complained nor demanded overtime pay. Occasionally he would go to the inn, down a few small glasses, and invite all the poor people there to join him for a drink. They loved him and would gather around him as if he were their elder brother. At the inn he’d be happy and throw his money around. Respectable people didn’t like Otto. His naïveté and honesty were considered foolish. They’d say, “A man who doesn’t stand up for what he thinks and doesn’t insist on getting what he deserves is an idiot.”

With the outbreak of war, all the warehouses were closed down and, like many others, Otto was left without work. He spent some days at the inn, frittered away what money he had, and when he no longer had a cent to his name, he went to the orphanage and worked there as a volunteer.

In the morning, he would chop wood and fill the water tanks, fetch groceries, and peel potatoes. In the evening, he would bathe the orphans as he sang to them and imitated animal sounds. Then he would sing them to sleep with lullabies. Those who knew him well said that his cheerfulness in the ghetto was astounding.

When the deportations began, Otto hid the orphans in basements, and from there he led them out through the sewers to peasant homes and monasteries. After all this activity, his face would be as radiant as that of a child.

The deportations, of course, did not pass him by. On the forced march across the Ukrainian steppes, he helped the weak and buried the dead. Over the course of the war, his face changed, his beard grew, and he came to look like a rabbi who had been reincarnated in a non-Jewish body.

I wasn’t with him in the labor camp, but after the liberation I met up with him again. He was thin. A kind of spirituality radiated from his face. Most of the refugees looked wretched and were depressed, but Otto hadn’t changed in the slightest: he had the same way of inclining his body toward you in careful attentiveness, the same natural desire to lend a hand and to help, the same self-effacement.

After the liberation, people hoarded food and clothing to a sickening extent. Otto didn’t change his habits. What he had done in the ghetto, he did here, too. In the soup kitchen of the Joint Distribution Committee, he peeled potatoes and washed dishes.

During the war, people changed beyond recognition.
Decent people who had run large companies would steal bread under the cover of darkness, and overnight honest merchants turned into enemies of their own children. But there were also people, mainly simpler folk, who came into their own, totally devoting themselves to others. Such a one was the middle Rauchwerger brother, Max.

After Max’s family had been rounded up and sent to the camps, leaving him all alone, he began to work as a volunteer in the hospital. He quickly gained a reputation for decency and devotion, and any time he appeared in the street to ask for donations for the sick, men and women would fill his basket with bread, salt, sugar, and candy for the children. People trusted him, freely giving him what they might have eaten themselves or kept for their own children. On more than one occasion, he was brought half an orange or half a lemon, “since it was more vital for the sick.”

Only some months previously, Max had been selling coal under an awning he’d put up on an empty lot, waiting hours for buyers and eventually selling the coal for next to nothing. Not a trace remained of this person. Max’s transformation was so complete that people didn’t believe their own eyes. His bearing became more erect, and he stood head and shoulders above all others. Of his former occupation not a trace remained. He resembled one of the porters—sunburned, ready to put his shoulder to any load. There were people who said, “He’s taken leave of his senses,” but most knew that Max was completely devoted to the sick, fully immersed in his work—and not crazy.

He would labor from morning till late at night and sleep in a corner room next to the woodshed. When the sick were deported, Max went with them.

Karl, the youngest of the brothers, was a deaf-mute from birth. Because he was as tall and as sturdily built as his brothers,
he earned his living as a porter, moving heavy things. He worked for the owner of a truck, a vulgar man who treated him abusively, kicking him and slapping his face. Karl, who was as innocent as a child, neither complained nor raised a hand to him, but worked from morning till night, barely making a living.

During the days of the ghetto, Karl returned to his former home: the Institution for Deaf-Mutes. The staff remembered him and welcomed him with open arms. The ghetto days became his hour of glory. Karl moved furniture, sacks of potatoes, barrels—anything and everything. He was greatly loved by the other deaf-mutes. If one of them was attacked, he would defend him with all his might.

Everyone wondered how these brothers had been raised, for they had not gone to high school and did not read newspapers. Their parents were simple folk, so what had they imbued their sons with to turn them into people with such a remarkable devotion to others? Nobody could come up with an answer.

The fate of young Karl was different from that of his two elder brothers. For no apparent reason, a Romanian officer attacked one of the deaf-mutes. Karl went up to the officer and asked him to leave the man alone. The officer began beating him, too. Karl stumbled and fell, but quickly picked himself up, caught the officer by his throat, and strangled him to death. Karl was immediately seized, and on that same night was taken out into the yard of the police station and shot.